For the fifth year in a row, Sweet Briar College community members volunteered for the annual United Way Day of Caring to help complete four agency projects in the Lynchburg area.

On June 3, 28 faculty and staff members worked in teams led by DiAnne Mattox (Development), Cindy Ponton (Purchasing), Gretchen Gravley-Tucker (Admissions), and Karen Summers (President's Office). The extensive participation reflects the College's ongoing commitment to volunteerism within the community.

The Development Team - Mattox, Allison Banton, Becky Edmonson, Dawn Gatewood, Elaine Hatter, Beth Ike, and Anita Muglia - completed two projects at the Presbyterian Home and Family Services in Lynchburg. Their work involved laying landscaping paper, edging bricks, mulching and planting bushes as well as painting floors and stairs of the cottage porches and the pool bathroom interior.

Ponton and her crew - Cindy Sale, Babs Rentz, Bobbi Carpenter, Wanda Spradley, Donna Nixon, and Donna Meeks - held a "crafts day" for clients of the Sheltered Workshop of Alta Vista. They provided supplies and assisted with potting individual plants and making sun catchers for the planters. Team members also made frames to contain pictures they took of clients before helping out with a cookout.

Summers and her team of Ken and Beth Huus, Catherine Bost, Heidi Morris, Shelby French, and Joe Malloy worked for the Lynchburg Covenant Fellowship at the Western Hotel/Joseph Nichols Tavern - home of the Festival House. They mulched, weeded, cleaned their garden area, cut back shrubbery, and painted the fence around the garden.

The Gretchen Gravley-led team from Admissions - made up of Tiffany Cummings; Jonathan Green and his wife, Lynn Buck; Nicole Smith; and Dena Lee - worked at the United Way office building. The group trimmed hedges, added flowers and shrubbery around the building and to the Nancy L. Sorrells Memorial Garden. Virginia Garden Supply provided mulch for the project.

Despite reports of sore muscles, bug bites, and paint-splattered clothing, when the work was finished, volunteers managed to enjoy lunch -- sponsored by Outback Steakhouse -- in Lynchburg's Riverside Park.

For more information about the United Way and the Day of Caring, please visit www.unitedwaycv.org